I've been with Plusnet for nigh on 2 years now having tried many ISP's over the last 10 years,
I like to change ISP's, houses and cars every few years - it keeps me on my toes :)
I just phoned Plusnet using saynotopremium.co.uk/ and requested a MAC.
They made me an offer NO ONE could refuse - reduced monthly cost to £4.99 AND upgrade to ADSL2
with no con-tract.
I'm staying put :-)
Last edited by: Dog on Thu 31 Mar 11 at 09:25
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Well done.
I also got my monthly BB fee reduced for the price of a phone call - previously mentioned on here somewhere.
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>>I also got my monthly BB fee reduced for the price of a phone call - previously mentioned on here somewhere<<
That's where I got the idea from DD,
I notice via SamKnows that the exchange feeding the house we're moving to (in 2 weeks) doesn't support ADSL2.
Ya can't win em all :)
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>>I'm staying put :-)>>
PlusNet has an excellent reputation for its products and customer service.
Incidentally I keep getting offers from PlusNet both by mail and e-mail, but it still can't come anywhere near my TalkTalk AnyTime International3 broadband and phone package (now no longer available to new subscribers).
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Funnily enough my Plusnet BB connection died yesterday evening, for the first time since I started using them, about 4 years ago. The physical connection was OK (green light on router) but CHAP authentication failed. Phoned helpline, spent about 5 minutes on hold then some chap whose first language was English confirmed they had a problem; lasted about 4 hours, no big deal.
Whilst I need to save pennies I'm loathed to change ISPs.
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>> Whilst I need to save pennies I'm loathed to change ISPs.
Often you don't need to. Just do the old mobile phone trick of phoning them and saying you're thinking of leaving them as someone has given you a better offer and can they match it.
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I've been meaning to make this phone call for the past two years. I am stuck in today as I am on house watch so will ring get a MAC of AOL.
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R & S, I would have thought you being a computer bod, you'd have given AO'Hell a wide berth.
Last edited by: VxFan on Thu 31 Mar 11 at 12:40
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The reason I took out the contract (18 months) is you got a free Dell laptop with it (a proper one) but I had meant to cancel it as soon as the 18 months were up. To be fair it has been reliable and I go over the limit of 40gb and they have never said anything.
I need a faster connection though. Currently paying £20 a month so I have to options paying a lot less or paying the same amount but getting a much better package. If AOL reduce their payments I might stick with them.
I've never use the crappy AOL software or anything like that, it is just basically talktalk, in fact I even use a talktalk ADSL username.
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>> >> Whilst I need to save pennies I'm loathed to change ISPs.
>>
>> Often you don't need to. Just do the old mobile phone trick of phoning them
>> and saying you're thinking of leaving them as someone has given you a better offer
>> and can they match it.
>>
Yeah, I'm going to have to do a few price comparisons and then give 'em a ring. Trouble is being fairly out in the sticks the chances of being LLU are minimal and so I'm unlikely to find any really cheap deals.
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>>...then some chap whose first language was English..>>
As far as I'm aware PlusNet's call centre, like the company, is based in Yorkshire.
Last edited by: Stuartli on Thu 31 Mar 11 at 12:35
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>>PlusNet's call centre, like the company, is based in Yorkshire.
I went there once. It didn't sound like English was being spoken. ;>)
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Nout wrong with a bit of Yorkshire me sen.
I can understand the Yorkshire accent better than the Indian or East Sussex one anyway!
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Having worked for an Indian company I've spent many hours of teleconferences (over crappy VoIP lines) conversing with very clever Indians with a very very good command of English, but it was always hard work and required 100% concentration because their delivery of English is so fast. Mind you that's guys and gals who knew what they were on about, rather than minimum wage call centre drones.
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Exactly :). I have spoken to a few Indian engineers had no trouble at all. It is the script monkeys I have problem with, it is hard enough dealing with the British/Irish script monkeys.
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>> >>PlusNet's call centre, like the company, is based in Yorkshire.
>>
>> I went there once. It didn't sound like English was being spoken. ;>)
>>
It was a bit different to my lovely Luton accent but we managed to communicate somehow ;-), maybe because my father was a Northerner.
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>>It was a bit different to my lovely Luton accent
Per'aps i' woz me Farley 'ill esta'e accen'.
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Plusnet are now owned by BT but this doesn't seem to have adversely affected them thankfully. I've been with them since October 2003 and have done the phone up and threaten to cancel once when they did give me a better deal.
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I see their package offers 60gb, I am not sure if that will be enough, it is a shame they become expensive when you want more bandwidth. BE Broadband seems a lot more suitable for what I need, that is owned by 02.
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>> I see their package offers 60gb,
>>
Residential not business.
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It is residential :).
It will be used on a residential line by residential people. I think Plusnet did have a clause about not being used for business use but most don't.
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>>I think Plusnet did have a clause about not being used for business use but most don't. >>
Because there is usually a separate service for businesses...:-)
TalkTalk's, for instance, seems extremely reasonable cost wise, particularly on the phone calls side:
tinyurl.com/3apo2df
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>>I see their package offers 60gb, I am not sure if that will be enough,>>
I have a 40GB monthly allowance with TalkTalk. I don't do P2P or giant file downloads, but am surfing for several hours a day and also use the system or TV for BBC iPlayer (high quality mode).
It's rare for me to go over five or six GB a month.......
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>> I see their package offers 60gb, I am not sure if that will be enough,
I think I'm on an unlimited download package with Pipex which costs me £8.16 a month.
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Most unlimited packages have a fair usage policy. I think the limit for mine is 100Gb per month and if you keep doing that then you will find them getting in touch or doing something. Fair enough I say.
But even with multiple users of streaming video in a house, downloading/streaming lots of music.... 100Gb is quite a bit of data. Written to single sided DVD-R's it would fill 23 disks.
If you downloaded 100Gb per month then you are probably downloading illegal content.
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You're missing video streaming though. I watch a lot of content of Iplayer and other channels. All perfectly legal.
I watch at least an hours worth of TV everyday via the internet if not more.
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>>Funnily enough my Plusnet BB connection died yesterday evening, for the first time since I started using them, about 4 years ago<<
Same here! That's what prompted me to request a MAC, although I'd been planning on switching anyway,
I thought I may have gorn over my 10gb allowance, but on checking, I've only used 4gb.
I shall switch my line rental back to Plusnet when my 12 month con-tract with Primus expires,
can't be bad though - £13 pm for line rental, BB + eve/weekend calls :)
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I am on Plusnet Pro, no shaping, all others I have looked at including unlimited downloads are shaped, I don't want to save £5 or £10 per month only to find it all slows up at peak times.
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Retire, then you don't have to surf at the same time as everyone else.
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I dont want to slow up at peak times either ...
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Yes, if they were logged on ...
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Truro (Cornwall) has gorn , superfast broadband as of last Monday,
A musik track can be downloaded in 2 seconds, a music album in 30 seconds, a feature length HD movie in 10 mins.
Is this fast, people, or is this just blurb?
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>>Truro>>
Hey 60mins of Jethro in 30 secs ...
Sounds quite fast ...
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>>Hey 60mins of Jethro in 30 secs ...<<
NOW you're talking :)
EDIT: I think you mean 'Jethro' where as I mean Tull :-D
Last edited by: Dog on Fri 1 Apr 11 at 09:03
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>>A musik track can be downloaded in 2 seconds, a music album in 30 seconds, a feature length HD movie in 10 mins.>>
My 17Mb average download speed is detailed as offering web pages in under a second but movies "in 12 minutes"...:-(((
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A movie in 10 mins is the generic 20Mb claim though it depends on the distance from the exchange etc.
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We'll have to see how it goes, I don't get it until early next week,
I may download A Clockwork Orange, just for the Hell of it.
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I rely on mine for work and haven't had any probs at all in years so stick with BT. However the cost with phone & inclusive calls is starting to become ridiculous.
Has anyone had any decent deals from BT recently?
On another forum a poster swears blind in got rental, 24/7 free calls and unlimited 8Mb broadband for £20/mth - whereas I'm paying about £50/mth for the same thing.
Last edited by: Bill Payer on Fri 1 Apr 11 at 09:50
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>> On another forum a poster swears blind in got rental, 24/7 free calls and unlimited
>> 8Mb broadband for £20/mth - whereas I'm paying about £50/mth for the same thing.
I have line rental, free 24x7 calls (and to most international destinations) unlimited internet upto 20mbs
for £24.99 month.
you are being ripped off.
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Nah
Tiscali, moved with reluctance, much shouting and threats of Mac code, to Talk Talk.
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>>Tiscali, moved with reluctance, much shouting and threats of Mac code, to Talk Talk. >>
I moved from Tiscali (had been a subscriber from WorldOnline days) to TalkTalk in April 2006 - my package is even better and at slightly lower cost than the one you state.
Tiscali's takeover of WorldOnline, a trend setter in providing lower cost broadband and phone services, ruined a very good company within a comparatively short period at the time.
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>> Tiscali's takeover of WorldOnline, a trend setter in providing lower cost broadband and phone services,
>> ruined a very good company within a comparatively short period at the time.
>>
They did the same to Pipex, hence my move to Plusnet.
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>>They did the same to Pipex, hence my move to Plusnet.>>
Pipex, in the early 1990s onwards, when under UUNet, was one of the best ISPs around, especially for business users; it pioneered the use of a lot of technology advancements in its early years.
Sadly, however, as with others, it began to fall by the wayside; a shame as it was my first ISP 15 years ago and my dial.pipex.com e-mail address is still in active use.
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Even earlier, I was with screaming.net - free internet if you had your phone calls with them Dial up only then - took up to 30 attempts to log on sometimes!
They were then absorbed by W.O.L.
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>>ree internet if you had your phone calls with them Dial up only then - took up to 30 attempts to log on sometimes!>>
You usually had to pay a monthly subscription in those days for an internet connection (usually £14.99) and pay the dial-up phone calls on top...:-)
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>>Has anyone had any decent deals from BT recently?<<
BT owns Plusnet, BP - I pay £13 for line rental, bb AND eve/wkend calls,
I use www.18185.co.uk/index2.php during the day.
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>> Is this fast, people, or is this just blurb?
If this is BT Infinity then it can be very fast. How fast will depend on how close you are to the BT Infinity street level cabinet. But you will never be very far away (couple hundred yards).
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I've just switched to BT.
Up to 10Mb (I get 3.5 - 4) £5/month, 18 month contract.
24/7 landline calls £5/month
Line rental £10/month (£120 for 12 months paid in advance)
One-off charge of £9 for home-hub and delivery.
I got an ex-gratia payment of £36 because they sent me an offer of 24/7 calls for £2/month. It took a few calls and threat of OFCOM before they honoured it (quote SLPUAP2).
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>> I've just switched to BT.
>>
>> Up to 10Mb (I get 3.5 - 4) £5/month, 18 month contract.
>> 24/7 landline calls £5/month
>> Line rental £10/month (£120 for 12 months paid in advance)
>> One-off charge of £9 for home-hub and delivery.
>>
Sounds like the deal I'm looking at at the moment before phoning Plusnet.
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We have just switched from Plusnet to Virgin in a effort to cut costs, and as my current connection is less than 1mb as I live to far away from the exchange.
As my partner already gets TV and Telephone through Virgin it made sense to disconnect the additional BT line we have and disconnect the PN service
Top marks for Plusnet though the service I’ve had from them has been good and their customer service (through the forums or on the phone) is 1st class.
When I went through the help pages to disconnect I was amused that the webpage’s name is “so the grass is greener.htm”
I did tell them, that if we move to a non-virgin area then we will be coming back to PN
Yesterday while I was at work Virgin came out and installed the Fibre Optic (we went for the up to 10meg option and a speed test I ran last night we got 9.3meg downloads so looking good.
What did concern me is that the Virgin Engineer used my partners laptop to “set it up” (this is what she has told me) and to get the VPN working (it already was, so I don’t understand this) I had used my laptop when I got home from work last night to change the passwords for the security from their default settings, and my laptop connected fine.
My partner went to use her laptop and complained “its not working what have you done!”
My laptop and mobile phone where connecting to the wireless no problem.
On investigation my partners laptop.
• Themes had changed
• Would not see any wireless networks even though wireless was switched on
• Nothing would launch i.e. the Zero Wireless Editor (or what ever it was called) firewalls anything
• When I did get Zero Wireless Editor (or what ever it was called) to launch (see disabled services*) it would not let me see any wireless networks
• All the old bloat ware that I took off previously had started re-installing.
• Device manager would not list anything???????
Confused, After a lot of poking around, I found out that all the *services had been disabled!!!! So windows was more or less just a dumb terminal, after having to go through and enabling all the necessary services I found that the, sound, themes (styles) and more importantly wireless discovery all came back to life.
Now the laptop is back how I had it but I don’t understand what possibly the engineer did to that laptop when I had it set before to work fine, all he should have done is just searched for new wireless signals and connected through that, not mess around with the settings.
Top Marks to PN, Virgin a ropy start perhaps?
Last edited by: Redviper on Fri 1 Apr 11 at 12:42
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Zero will shout at me, but I get about 38Mbit/s download speed and 7Mbit/s upload. I think there are two packages for BT Infinity with a different cap for upload (2Mbit/s vs 10Mbit/s) and download limit (40Gb vs 100Gb).
You should also get the new improved HomeHub 3.
Also, when I first ordered it their site said I'd get about 20Mbit/s download and I got 38. Now it says they think I'd get 34Mbit/s. So the figures the site uses are accurate now.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Fri 1 Apr 11 at 13:03
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Just gone and bought a can of expanding foam.
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Is that for me or Dog ;-)
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Is that to shut Rob's mouth shut with? :p
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There aren't any limits on the full-fat BT Infinity any more.
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When I got it last May there was a fair usage policy of 100Gb I think.
Ratlle, the foam is for the street level cabinet so fill it up and break it ;-)
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You poke the nozzle of the can into one of the cabinet vents, fill the cabinet up with foam, and it blocks all the fans, stops the airflow, and the whole thing shuts down or overheats.
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That is criminal damage though :).
The fastest connection I can get is 12mbps even though the exchange is just 1/3 of a mile away.
I think because it is one of the biggest and busiest exchanges in the area they tend to upgrade it last. That said it has been ADSL enabled since about 1999.
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>> That is criminal damage though :).
>>
>> The fastest connection I can get is 12mbps even though the exchange is just 1/3
>> of a mile away.
count yourself lucky, I live 2 miles from the exchange, and the fastest ADSL I can get is 1mb
and thats on a good day, ive had worse.
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I gets 2 Mbps up and 0.4 down, port (and Lime) 8095,
it'll be interesting to see what I gets when we go ADSL2 this week.
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Sounds like it can only get better. But your low speed is likely to be down to line quality and distance and not ADSL.
The original ADSL (as opposed to ADSL2) should give you faster than you're getting.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Sun 3 Apr 11 at 17:15
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I know I can update my BT socket Rob, and even the old Speedtouch modem,
I'll see how the upgrade to ADSL2 goes, but we hope to be moving to another property in the sticks on the 15th,
so it's goodbye to ADSL2, unfortunately.
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Does this mean you will be further from an exchange after the move? Will it be in an area with Virgin cable? Or are we talking really out in the sticks?
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>> Does this mean you will be further from an exchange after the move? Will it
>> be in an area with Virgin cable? Or are we talking really out in the
>> sticks?
Where he's going, they still be using two tins connected by a piece o' string..
:)
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>>..and even the old Speedtouch modem>>
To the best of my knowledge USB modems can never achieve better than an "Up to 8Mb" standard - Thomson had a driver update around the middle of this decade to enable the 330 model to do so.
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Yes, it's a c1790 moorland cottage, with only 1 neighb, no mains water or drainage :)
I asked Sam (Knows) and it's OK for 1-2Mbps, so we'll see whats a'foot when we move in!
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Cheap broadband. - VxFan
